Debates sobre o Estado capitalista: um olhar epistemológico sobre as teorias de Ralph Miliband e Nicos Poulantzas

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the theories about the capitalist state of Ralph Miliband and Nicos Poulantzas. From a point of view which emphasizes the different epistemological and ontological assumptions adopted by these two Marxist authors, we seek to reveal how these assumptions affected their substantive theories about the State. For this, we went over the works The State in Capitalist Society (SCS), by Miliband, and Political Power and Social Classes (PPSC), by Poulantzas, two texts with huge different approaches. Our journey begins with an examination of the theory developed by Poulantzas in PPSC, a highly influenced text by the epistemological program of the franco-algerian philosopher Louis Althusser. In this part of work, we made a brief presentation of Althusserian theses, especially those ones found in the texts For Marx and Reading Capital, clarifying the way how Poulantzas adopts such epistemological theses in his work. After that, we examined the Miliband theory present in SCS, analyzing the arguments contained in this text, and then consider deeper into the examination of epistemological and ontological assumptions adopted by the author, and their main consequences for the substantive sociological analyzes presented in that text. Finally, we compared the approaches of Miliband and Poulantzas developed in both mentioned works. As our hypothesis is that the disagreements, in the substantive sociological theory field, were caused by strong existing in the level of the assumptions, we emphasized the differences of epistemological and ontological order existing in these two authors texts.